Proper English (K. J. Charles)
Jul. 24th, 2020 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhostaples posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fffridayProper English is a historical (1900s) romance-cum-murder mystery, the prequel to Charles' m/m thriller/romance Think of England. I read both back to back, and found that Proper English sat rather less comfortably within its secondary genre than Think of England did. However, it was still a pleasing romance with a very engaging central couple. The point of view character, an excellent shot, has been invited to join a shooting party in Scotland - and finds herself far more interested in her host's fiancée than he seems to be.
This is a country house murder mystery with the associated limited pool of suspects. It suffers from the Patricia Wentworth problem of the certainty that neither half of the pleasant young romantic couple can possibly have done it. Here we have three such couples, all of them acting as alibi for their other half. That narrows the field down to the only pair that's transgressed the moral code of the twenty-first century, and I wasn't exactly surprised that it wasn't the daughter of the noble house whodunnit, either. The Earl and Countess were never really more than ciphers, which was a pity, because they'd have made lovely suspects. (I got the impression that she was trying with the Earl, and with Jimmy too, come to that, but it never quite took. Christie, given the same set-up and the same characters, might well have produced the same murderer, but an awful lot of other people would have looked worryingly plausible first. (Myself, I'd have been tempted to have Fen do it with her new-found shooting skills as a parting gift to her ex-fiancé - who would probably welcome it so long as she got rid of the body afterwards.)
However, it had a satisfyingly 'had it coming' victim, and there was some lovely suspense when he kept not showing up and the Indian knife had disappeared... More to the point, it was a very satisfying romance, and I will reread it as a love story with detective interruptions, if not the reverse.
This is a country house murder mystery with the associated limited pool of suspects. It suffers from the Patricia Wentworth problem of the certainty that neither half of the pleasant young romantic couple can possibly have done it. Here we have three such couples, all of them acting as alibi for their other half. That narrows the field down to the only pair that's transgressed the moral code of the twenty-first century, and I wasn't exactly surprised that it wasn't the daughter of the noble house whodunnit, either. The Earl and Countess were never really more than ciphers, which was a pity, because they'd have made lovely suspects. (I got the impression that she was trying with the Earl, and with Jimmy too, come to that, but it never quite took. Christie, given the same set-up and the same characters, might well have produced the same murderer, but an awful lot of other people would have looked worryingly plausible first. (Myself, I'd have been tempted to have Fen do it with her new-found shooting skills as a parting gift to her ex-fiancé - who would probably welcome it so long as she got rid of the body afterwards.)
However, it had a satisfyingly 'had it coming' victim, and there was some lovely suspense when he kept not showing up and the Indian knife had disappeared... More to the point, it was a very satisfying romance, and I will reread it as a love story with detective interruptions, if not the reverse.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-24 06:04 pm (UTC)